Cats Cradle 1963 is Vonneguts most ambitious novel, which put into the language terms like wampeter, kerass and granfalloon as well as a structured religion, Boskonism and was submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for a Masters Degree in anthropology, and in its sprawling compass and almost uncontrolled and uncontrollable invention, may be Vonneguts best novel. Written contemporaneously with the Cuban missile crisis and countenancing a version of a world in the grasp of magnified human stupidity, the novel is centered on Felix Hoenikker, a chemical scientist reminiscent of Robert Oppenheimer except that Oppenheimer was destroyed by his conscience and Hoenikker, delighting in the disastrous chemicals he has invented, has no conscience at all.
